If you ever wanted to buy a piece of congressional history, now’s your chance.

The estate of the late congressman Ike Skelton, D-Mo., who served 34 years in Congress, has put thousands of papers, letters and photographs up for sale via an online auction house.

Skelton was a moderate first elected in 1976 in a district that eventually trended heavily Republican. He was chairman of the House Armed Services Committee when he lost his re-election bid in the Tea Party wave of 2010 to Republican Vicky Hartzler. Skelton returned to Missouri and died last year at age 81.

According to Jason Roske, owner of KC Auction and Appraisal Co., Skelton’s will directed that the items in his collection be sold, not sent to a library or archive, and the estate contracted with his firm to carry out the auction. The Joint Forces Staff College in Norfolk, Va., rededicated its military research library in Skelton’s name in March 2013, but apparently it is not a repository for his personal papers.

Thus there are now available for online bidding thousands of items ranging from invitations to presidential inaugurations to letters of thanks from other lawmakers, to Air Force One lapel pins to a trove of documents Skelton had filed in folders labeled “famous”: letters from Bill and Hillary Clinton, George W. Bush, Margaret Thatcher, Ted Kennedy, Nancy Reagan and on and on.

Perhaps one of the most touching pieces is a letter Sen. Kennedy wrote to Skelton in May 2008, as he was battling cancer, apparently responding to a “get well” note from Skelton. “I’ve only just begun to fight,” wrote Kennedy, who died the following year.

Roske said working with the Skelton files was “a fascinating current history lesson. It is interesting to see the human side of politics … these guys go to work every day and they establish relationships over the years.”